They're getting nerfed in 5.1, whether it's going to be big enough nerfs to actually change their effective performance remains to be seen. I suspect the top mages will be about as strong as they are now though (they'll just have slightly longer cooldowns on a couple things), the result if anything of nerfing some of their CC cooldowns like Circle of Frost will be that Frost Mages will spend more time DPS'ing - their damage will rise while their CC falls - and the effective pressure of good mages will probably stay just about the same as it is now.

Well at least they got rid of that pyro CD. I can do with anything else other than that. My mage is my main, but my Warrior is my pvp char, and even with Avatar up catching and actually killing a skilled mage is a headache...not looking forward to what it'll be like when Avatar gets nerfed though...

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - Carl Sagan

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness. - Charles Darwin

The problem, as always, is that these abilities are fine for PVE and imba for PVP. But Blizzard has already made it clear that PVE will always come first, which is how they intend it to be.

The funny thing is they're a decent chunk of people that would say quite the opposite in terms of balance.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - Carl Sagan

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness. - Charles Darwin

I've been watching the last several rounds of matches on the twitch stream, and almost every match has ended in such an unbelievable one-shot burst that makes the stream's chat explode with "WTF HOW DID THAT HAPPEN I DIDNT EVEN SEE IT". I've missed almost every kill just by blinking or looking at another part of the screen. It's so stupid.

The worst part is, this is only the beginning of the expansion. It's only gonna get burstier.

It was pretty hilarious seeing Cdew going from 200k health to 0 in one frost bomb and seeing everyone, commentators included going "????????".

Mages in this game have the best of every worlds: Good and instant damage including burst, mobility, plenty of CC (AoE, hard, soft... you name it), defensive CDs together a invulnerability spell, offensive dispel that steals the buff they remove, etc etc...

The only thing I can give them is that they require a average-high skillcap to play to full extent... but when that skillcap is reached, they are uncontrollable beasts.

It was pretty hilarious seeing Cdew going from 200k health to 0 in one frost bomb and seeing everyone, commentators included going "????????".

Mages in this game have the best of every worlds: Good and instant damage including burst, mobility, plenty of CC (AoE, hard, soft... you name it), defensive CDs together a invulnerability spell, offensive dispel that steals the buff they remove, etc etc...

The only thing I can give them is that they require a average-high skillcap to play to full extent... but when that skillcap is reached, they are uncontrollable beasts.

Blizzard will never nerf them, though.

Yes correct, there is fine line between an average mage and a good mage but it shouldn't give them the right to be gods.